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last year i contacted the german archive for former wehrmacht soldiers, they have the complete unit history of nearly every person who ever did anything in the german army. i had to wait 6 months for the answer letter, but the informations i got were very interesting.

my mothers' dad (i dont say grandfather to him because he died before i was born) joined the Waffen SS in 1940. in 1941 he participiated in 'Unternehmen Barbarossa', the raid on the soviet union, he was in a SS Division in the Heeresgruppe Süd (Krim, Oilfields of Baku...). in 1941 he got wounded for the first time, shot in the left lower leg by a russian semi auto rifle, joined the troops again 4 weeks later and was restationed with his unit in yugoslavia for anti partisan fighting. in 1943 he was wounded again in the same leg, but he staied with his unit, in 1944 he joined the 13. SS division "Handschar - kroatische Nummer 1", was wounded again in the _same_ leg and was then sent to germany as some kind of drill seargent in a SS training camp. in 1945 he got captured by the brits, braught to england where he had to repair war damages as a POW until 1948/9. they asked him to stay there but he refused and returned to austria, where he married my grandmother, who still lives in our hometown. he died in 1971 when my mum was 14.
im not proud that he was in the SS, but it was his choice and times were different.

my other grandfather was in a german mountain division until he got capured by the americans in 1944. in 1943 he got the iron cross second class, but i still dont know for what reason. his unit history was very undetailed.
he died in 1991, was a great man, i loved him.

a great uncle of mine was a flight technician in a messerschmidt facility, had something to do with the first jet engines and knew wernher von braun. sadly i dont know anything about him, except that the americans asked him to immigrate to the US for flight/rocket research proposes, but he refused for a reason i cant remember. hm.

My grandfather from the father's side served in HMG squadron 1st Uhlan Regiment in September 1939 and his cousin served as AT rifle gunner in this regiment.

On 11th september - during one of the most tragic events of september campaign (battle between two polish units - uhlan regiment and infantry battalion when many good people died - including 1st Uhlan Regiment commander) my grandfather's horse was killed, and he lost his boot under the horse's body. Separated from his unit, he decided to return home, but about week later was arrested by Russians. He was lucky - because he was simple soldier, so they let him free few hours later.
During the ocupation he served in Homeland Army - probably as a engineer platoon comander (but we are not sure ). In june 1944 almost every male from grandfather's family were executed by Germans during village pacification - but grandfather again managed to escape. After the war - he was again arrested by Russians and spend some time in coal mine.He died in 1987.

My grandfather from mothers side was too young to fight in WWII, but was almost executed by Germans, when they find Jewish hideout in his village. To this day he don't understand why they let him, and his family free.
My grandmother spend four years on german farm as a "slave'.
He also was very lucky, because they treated her very well (As she said it was realy rare). Maybe because of fact, that she was very young, and they lost their only son in 1941 on eastern front.

My Great-Grandpops service with the Marines during World War 1. That's all we know of him, fact that we never knew how he was killed over there but only that he was killed.

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My Grandpops on my Dad's side serviced in World War 2, and Vietnam with the 82nd airborne. He was part of the 82nd airborne jumps in D-Day and Holland in 1944. He said they were sent to Berlin for occupation duty, and then returned to the United Sates in 1946.

He said from 1949 till Tet, they were just training and training and training. He was then sent to the Dominican Republic during their civil war in 1965. He was back in the US the same year.

During the Tet Offensive, he was sent to Vietnam, he was then sent back to the US in like 1969 or 1970, one of those. After Vietnam, he got out of the US ARMY and retired. His still alive and proud to show me his medals every time I visit him in Northern Ohio. He got a silver star, bronze star, and 4 Purple Hearts.

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My Grand-Daddy on my Mom's side lived in Korea when Japan was there. I heard stories that he fought against Japan when they were there in 1925 till 1945.

In 1950 till 1953, he fought during the Korean War against the North Koreans. He was awarded a Bronze Star from the United States for heroism. I was with him one time when he had a flash back, a small group of people were coming towards us on the road and he jumped, and basically ran forward. He stopped after running about 20 feet, looked back and told me that he throught they were getting attacked by an another wave of Chinnese troops, and was moving to the machineguns to help feed them ammo...

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My Uncles in Korea, (All Three of them) serviced in the South Korean Army after the Korean War. My oldest Uncle was deployed to Vietnam with the South Korean forces there, and saw a bit of action. He was with the paratroop units that were sent.

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My dad, he was with the 101st airborne during Desert Storm. He wouldn't tell me what action he has seen but he was given an CIB for being there, so my guess would that he have, his just not tellin me.

Then he was deployed with the Ohio National Guard to Iraq in 2003 and then retired when he got back. He got a Bronze Star from that little visit.

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Myself, I was only deployed on Homeland Defense days after 9/11 and throughout 2002-2004. Had a visit to Wash DC (Air-Defense-Arty) and a few other spots in the United States. Missed out on a deployment to Iraq (May of 2003), but we invaded in March, so I lucked out on that. I only got myself a Meritorious Service Medal just lately, which I'm damn proud of, I tell ya.

I'm going to retire here stortly, in a few months myself but proud of my service, and can't wait to walk the earth to wonderland.

Both my grandfathers served in the South African Army in ww 2 one in the Airforce and one the Army. Some of the other members of my family actualy fought in Italy and Africa. My Father and all of his generation fough in the 23 year bush war. One of my uncles, Jan Breytenbach, gained fame as the creator of the Recce and 32 Battalion (the Baffulo soldiers) and also led the largest airborne op after ww 2 in the strike on cassinga in angola.

Some how releated to General Custer. One Grandfather was a paratrooper in the 101st and jumped into Normandy on D-day, and from what I know from his friends, because he won't talk about it, did some heroic stuff, but then again, who didn't on that day? Other Grandfather was a top turret gunner in a B-25 Bomber in the Pacific. All great uncles served in the Army in WW2, most were in Armor with Patton on the march to Germany, some didn't make it home. Father was a corpsman in a Marine Corps Recon outfit in 'Nam, but he doesn't talk about it either, he did tell me that his platoon had caught a Vietcong soldier wounded after his squad was ambushed by them, and the 2LT wanted to bring the guy back for Intel, but instead my dad said that he told the Lieutenent to get bent and instead put a round right between the Vietcong soldiers eyes. My two brothers were in the Air Force, one was a bomb loader *snicker*, and the other a Nurse. I was a ground pounder with the 101st (Airborne-Air Assault) for 4 years, and then my knees and back convinced me to do something else.

My family comes from the south of Poland so all my grandparents saw some kind of action during the two world wars.

My dads mom was married to a Colonel in the Polish Cavalry as he was of noble birth. He was captured and executed at Katyn together with the other Polish officers. For the remainder of the war my grandmother worked with the partisans in Poland together with her brothers shipping weapons, printing manuals on how to conduct terrorism against the Wehrmacht. She was awarded several medals that I have at home, although Im not quite sure of which kind they are.
Her second husband was also a soldier in the polish army during ww2. He was captured by Soviets and send a to siberian prison camp from where he escaped and walked back to poland for many years.
Other brothers of her served in the free polish army at cassino, but I dont really know anything about them more than that they were at cassino.

On my mothers side, her father was drafted into the Russian army at the age of 14 in WW1 as he lived very near the Ukraine. He told my mom stories about how they sometimes were armed with pitchforks and loaded full of vodka and were ordered to attack. He survived the war and became a member of the parliment in poland afterwards.

My moms mother lost 12 of her brothers in WW2, wither as soldiers or as partisans. She herself did some work for the german occupation forces to stay alive, and after the war she was nearly executed by the soviets for that.
She and the other ladies that had been working for the Germans were living in an isolated house in some forest when soviet soldiers entered the house at night and shot them all. My grandmother survived because the soldier that came to her room was a friend of hers from school, and he recognized her and helped her out through the window so that she could escape.

I never got to talk to my grandparents about this stuff, I only know what my parents were told.

My Great-Grandpops service with the Marines during World War 1. That's all we know of him, fact that we never knew how he was killed over there but only that he was killed.

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My Grandpops on my Dad's side serviced in World War 2, and Vietnam with the 82nd airborne. He was part of the 82nd airborne jumps in D-Day and Holland in 1944. He said they were sent to Berlin for occupation duty, and then returned to the United Sates in 1946.

He said from 1949 till Tet, they were just training and training and training. He was then sent to the Dominican Republic during their civil war in 1965. He was back in the US the same year.

During the Tet Offensive, he was sent to Vietnam, he was then sent back to the US in like 1969 or 1970, one of those. After Vietnam, he got out of the US ARMY and retired. His still alive and proud to show me his medals every time I visit him in Northern Ohio. He got a silver star, bronze star, and 4 Purple Hearts.

--------------------------

My Grand-Daddy on my Mom's side lived in Korea when Japan was there. I heard stories that he fought against Japan when they were there in 1925 till 1945.

In 1950 till 1953, he fought during the Korean War against the North Koreans. He was awarded a Bronze Star from the United States for heroism. I was with him one time when he had a flash back, a small group of people were coming towards us on the road and he jumped, and basically ran forward. He stopped after running about 20 feet, looked back and told me that he throught they were getting attacked by an another wave of Chinnese troops, and was moving to the machineguns to help feed them ammo...

------------------------------------

My Uncles in Korea, (All Three of them) serviced in the South Korean Army after the Korean War. My oldest Uncle was deployed to Vietnam with the South Korean forces there, and saw a bit of action. He was with the paratroop units that were sent.

-------------------------------------

My dad, he was with the 101st airborne during Desert Storm. He wouldn't tell me what action he has seen but he was given an CIB for being there, so my guess would that he have, his just not tellin me.

Then he was deployed with the Ohio National Guard to Iraq in 2003 and then retired when he got back. He got a Bronze Star from that little visit.

--------------------------------------

Myself, I was only deployed on Homeland Defense days after 9/11 and throughout 2002-2004. Had a visit to Wash DC (Air-Defense-Arty) and a few other spots in the United States. Missed out on a deployment to Iraq (May of 2003), but we invaded in March, so I lucked out on that. I only got myself a Meritorious Service Medal just lately, which I'm damn proud of, I tell ya.

I'm going to retire here stortly, in a few months myself but proud of my service, and can't wait to walk the earth to wonderland.

Now THAT is quite a family history mate.

I've got some distant relatives in the US who served in North Africa and Italy, and one who was a radar operator on a ship in the pacific.

I'll see if i can find out more about them and where they served and what they did and so forth.

A guy my dad knows was in the army at some point during the cold war.
He told me once he was sent to Northern Norway at a time when alot of troops were mobilized because they feared the Russians were about to march across the border.

My Grandpa was a corporal with the 596th Combat Engineer Coy. attached to the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team in WWII. He saw action in Italy, Southern France, Belgium and Germany. The 517th was never really attached to any division although by the end of the war I think it was part of the 82nd. My grandpa would usually tell me stories of his time during training. One story was one of the guys in the company was a joker and threw a dummy handgrenade into the officers mess. The call 'GRENADE' went out and guys were jumping out of the mess all over the place. One of the NCO's broke his arm. Another guy got plastered drunk and stole a 2 ton truck from the motorpool and drove it out of the base with the MP's in pursuit only to loose the MP's and return it without getting caught. He doesn't talk much about his combat stories. He's starting to open up about his experiences finding and clearing mines under fire. One I remember was when his company and elements of the 517th ran into those huge Jagdtiger tanks on their way into Germany. I remember him telling me he and the other guys crapped their pants when they saw those tanks. He's in his 80's now and has recently survived a big heartattack in classic paratrooper style. Once a para always a para.

The forecast provided by Sverre Petterssen and the other meteorologists caused Eisenhower to decide at 0430 4 June to postpone D-day to June 6, at first they planned to postpone the operation to June 19, but luckily all three teams predicted a break in the weat

Figured out how lol, my great-great-great grandfathers daughter, was his mother....

I have other family members, in ww1,ww2, one was a bomber who was shot down over Italy (dont know more than that though, well I have a copy of a newspaper clipping /shrug)

It was May the 6th in Sarajevo,the quarter of Grbavica.In May the 3rd Serbs with the JNA occupied that quarter(ain't I lucky eh?)...they just came there from the barracks and the hills that are really close to my quarter.My father says it was funny,sometimes he looked down upon the balcony of our building and he would see true chetniks,with long beard and kokarde(a kind of hat),normal serb youngs and...the Yugoslav army.He says it's funny,10 years ago you couldn't even imagine chetniks and the JNA together.Well this time it happened. In those 3 days noone dared to get out of their apartments,we locked the door of the entrance of our building...there were serbs too there but they didn't want to get out neither.The 5th, in the evening, you hear some chetniks down there lauding:"Open the dorrs or we gonna throw a bomb inside".Noone managed to do anything but the serbs of our building went to open the door, but no,they were not "traitors" they just tought everything would go fine. So they opened the doors...some residenters went down to talk with serbs and chetniks.One of the chetnik told a residenter to make the list of muslims,croats and serbs living in the building...that night nothing happened.Tomorrow morning my father went down with others too,and there was a chetnik lauding at a serb saying"here we are protecting you from muslims,is this the reward we get from you??" but noone replied it was pure chaos.My father heard a conversation between a serb who went to the JNA commander and told him "Mayor,your troops seem a bit...grude at us" and the commander replied "Oh they are nervous,try to understand them"...so my father was there looking how the situation was and saw a guy,a nice guy,an armed serb who was there with others,but he seemed fine,he seemed a Sarajlija too. So my father went to him and was like "Jarane(a term used in Sarajevo to say "friend") listen,I got 2 young kids(I was one of them) ,my wife and her mother who feels really bad...is there a way to get her out of here,we want to take her to a hospital". He said: "Jarane,I got no problems,but if you want to cross the bridge(there was a bridge really close to us),beware of them(meaning muslims) they are shooting at everyone...". And my father was like "oh don't worry about it,thank you very much,I'm going to tell my wife now.So my father returned to the apartment and said"we gotta get out,now!" .And that was what we did. We just took some money and nothing else.So we went down,me,my brother,my father,my mother and my grandma and we found some of our neighbours(serbs) who were talking to the soldiers...2 old mans,2 serbs,our neighbours saw my mather who was scared to death,and proposed to walk us to the other side of the city("muslim" controlled).We immediately agree and my father looked for the serb soldier of before and asked him if he could walk us too.He did it but just for few meters,than it was 5 of us plus the old mans.You cannot even imagine what a little distance it was,maybe 100 meters between our building and the bridge.So we walked the bridge.Lol I didn't want to give my hand to the old man,he was a stranger.But somehow we made it,my father and mother were scared to death,there were a lot of snipers...but yes we made it. So that was it,the serb even went to buy some bread on the "muslim" side and returned to our quarter.We walked the main street of the city(with my grandma) and there were the JNA barracks in the middle,the "Kasarna Marsala Tita" and we were afraid of that too.But we made it succesfully to the home of my father's bro.In the same apartment there were 17 of us lol,because there came even my aunt and her 3 kids because they were from Dobrinja(another occupied quarter) with the help of UN convoys who escorted women and kids.Later,we decided to get out of the city,and lol we took the last bus who went out of Sarajevo.That was the last bus,the day after,the siege begun for other 3 years and it wasn't that easy to get out of the city.But it isn't still finished lol.In the quarter of Ilidza,serb occupied(Ilidza and Dobrinja were at the perifery,that's why they were occupied) we were held there because "muslims" held as prisoners the JNA soldiers from the barrack we walcked by.But we released the soldiers,and they released our convoy,made up of 5000 women and kids.Than we went in Croatia,for a year,and than to Italy,where I am now.

My old man always told me and my brother about how he got the worst end of the deal in a shootout with a sniper at Remagen. Apparently they were on the east side of the bridge and there were German snipers around on the hills to the south.

They got 3 Shermans to sit along the road shooting up likely places and he and another guy were on the back of 2 Shermans shooting the .50 cals at anything that looked like a good target.

He told me that the guy on the tank next to him had a bullet whiz by his ear and decided that it was a job for the infantry. He saw the guy jump down and get behind the tank, just as he turned his head back to keep shooting a bullet bounced off the top of the tank, richoched off the .50 cal and hit him in the chest.

He said it was like getting kicked by a horse, he half flew through the air and bounced off the rear of the tank and landed in the dirt.

The bullet bounced off a rib and broke it but that was all, it all but got him out of the war because he was sent back to France. They had to operate I guess because pieces of the bullet were in there.

He was a bridge engineer at Remagen. I think he said the 51st or 50th Engineers.

My fathers side: My grandmother was a member of the polish resistance, hid jews and such.
Her uncle or something was a pilot, a captain if I`m not wrong. He got shot down over Warsaw.
My grandfather was a partisan or something, I`m not sure. At the end of the war, he got sent to some place in eastern Poland because a group of polish soldiers was refusing to let the russians through. He was ordered to kill them but he deserted. He was caught and put in prison, about to be executed. My grandmother then told the guard that she was pregnant and he let my grandfather go. He never recovered.

My mothers side:
My grandfather was a partisan, if I`m not mistaken. Donīt really know much about him.
But I do know that many people from my family were put in concentration camps, don`t know how many, or which for that matter. It isnīt anything that my parents, or grandparents, want to talk about.

My grandpa's elder father was a lieutanant of the chinese army fightin against Japanese and he was killed by a head-shot.Tat's all i know about him.Not much info coz china was so messy at tat time. my gandpa told me when i was just 6 and he had dead alreadi as well.